


fanciful yet practical

by sadlikeknives



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Makeup, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-12 18:33:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13553172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sadlikeknives/pseuds/sadlikeknives
Summary: That time Blue gave everyone makeovers.





	fanciful yet practical

**Author's Note:**

  * For [within_a_dream](https://archiveofourown.org/users/within_a_dream/gifts).



It had started the afternoon before, the five of them lazing in the sun coming in through Monmouth Manufacturing's windows when Adam, for conversational reasons Gansey hadn't been paying attention to, had said something about how Blue didn't wear makeup. Gansey had then had cause to pay attention, as Blue had shoved herself up onto her elbows to look at Adam, and he'd lost the contact of her head against his thigh.

"What?" Adam had asked.

It had been Ronan who answered. "She's wearing like eight different things right now."

Gansey and Adam and Noah had chorused, " _Really_?" and Blue had rolled her eyes and flopped back down, muttering about how boys were useless, and then Adam had thought to ask Ronan how he knew, and he'd said something vague about Irish dance competitions, and then they'd had a new subject for a while.

Which brought them to today, and Gansey coming home to find Blue, Adam, Ronan, and Noah sitting on the floor surrounded by the contents of Blue's makeup bag, Blue deep in the process of giving makeovers. Ronan looked over, looking even more dangerous than usual with something smoky around his eyes topped off by ornately graphic black eyeliner, and told him, deadpan, "Save yourself." Chainsaw was perched on the arm of the sofa next to him, watching the entire proceedings with curious, beady eyes. Next to Ronan, Adam was somehow practically glowing, unearthly and a little eerie. The contrast, Gansey thought, made them even more beautiful than usual. Gansey wasn't sure he wanted to save himself.

"I want the dinosaur eyeshadow," Noah was declaring to Blue.

"That's not really going to go with your coloring, but—oh, you know what? Fine. Whatever you want. Ronan, you need highlighter."

"I thought Adam already had all the highlighter on his face."

"Sparkle, Ronan, sparkle," Adam teased.

"Not as much highlighter as Adam, obviously," Blue said, brushing something along Ronan's cheeks and then pulling back to survey her work. Gansey didn't understand how, but she'd been right: whatever she'd just done had _done something_ to Ronan's cheekbones, which had already been stupidly good.

"I thought we were getting pizza," Gansey said, inching warily closer to the group.

"We're getting pizza later," Blue informed him.

"After she's done," Noah agreed solemnly.

"We never did agree what we were going to do to Gansey," Ronan said, and for some reason the statement didn't make him as nervous as it should have, under the circumstances.

"We'll make it up as we go along," Blue told Ronan, and that—did make Gansey kind of nervous. Just a little.

While still maintaining a safe distance, he peered down at the stuff scattered on the floor between the four of them. Blue's idea of makeup and his mother and sister's idea of makeup did not appear to have much in common. Instead of sleek black compacts with discreet logos, half of which he recognized as clothing designers, Blue's arsenal consisted half of bottles and tubes with logos he saw on commercials, and at the dollar store, and half of little plastic baggies and tubs, hand labeled, containing brightly colored powders and potions. He stepped close enough to bend down and picked up one of the baggies and asked, skeptic, "Is this a cosmetic item or narcotics, Jane?"

Blue rolled her eyes at him. "It's _eyeshadow_ "

The label read 'Dapper Mr. Shark' and the contents of the bag were very...well, very blue. "Are you sure?" 'Dapper Mr. Shark' sounded like code for drugs to him. "I'm not sure you should put something this color on your eyes."

Ronan reached over and flicked the bag with one thumbnail. "I'm not sure you should snort something that color, either."

Gansey eyed him warily, and Blue took the opportunity to snatch the little baggie back. "Oh, it'd just give you blue snot," she scoffed. "Now, come here. I don't think my concealer's going to match, but I can at least try to do something about those dark circles."

Gansey obediently set down and let her fuss over him, and as her fingers smoothed and patted over the delicate hollows under his eyes he thought he could see some of the appeal of all this. "I just thought," he said after a moment. "I thought eyeshadow came in little, you know, discs. In a case." There was a word, which he knew when Blue wasn't touching his face. "A compact."

"Yeah, well," Blue told him, "this is how it comes when Orla and I buy it from a friend of hers who has her own indie line."

"I understood most of those words separately," Gansey said, and Blue gave him a pitying look. "Wait, one of your friends makes this herself?"

"One of _Orla's_ friends," Blue corrected.

"Like, without a factory or anything? How do you know there's quality control?"

"It's fine. Everything she uses is safe. Lots of people do it."

Gansey was not sure he was convinced, but speaking of safe, "What the hell is _that_?" he asked, jerking back from the thing Blue had just picked up and was now reaching toward him with.

"It's an eyelash curler," Blue said. There was no mercy in her tone or on her face. 

"That goes near your _eye_?"

"It goes near _your_ eye. Hold still."

"It looks like a torture device!"

"It will be if you don't hold still. Look, I used it on Ronan and he's fine."

There was something about that...there it was. "Not Adam?"

"No, Adam's lashes are unfairly good to start with. Hold _still_. I only had to tell Ronan once."

"I have never held more still in my life," Gansey promised, and he meant it. He had been less still when there were wasps about. When Blue finished with the torture device and went back to rummaging through her stash, he risked a look over at where Adam had settled down next to Ronan, his thigh pressing against his. Ronan was applying something to Noah's cheek, where the smudge was, which Gansey was somehow vaguely surprised to see sticking; he paused, hesitated, and then dropped a kiss on Adam's cheek before going back to his finger painting.

There were, Gansey thought, worse ways to spend an afternoon. Even with the eyelash curler.

**Author's Note:**

> Dapper Mr. Shark is a real eyeshadow shade, made by Fyrinnae Cosmetics, which I doubt a friend of Orla's owns but it's possible. 'The dinosaur eyeshadow' refers to Bitey Tyrannosaur, by the same company. They're both really pretty.


End file.
